Nairobi

Ugandan rebels Saturday took control of Kampala after two days of house-to-house fighting, reducing government resistance in the capital to a few pockets of holdout troops, Western and U.N. officials said. "Kampala is in NRA (National Resistance Army) hands," said a report radioed to the British High Commission (embassy) in Nairobi by British diplomats Saturday night. "There are still pockets of resistance," the report said. "Things have quieted down, but there is still shooting."

A federal judge on Monday reversed himself and ruled that jurors can be shown an alleged confession by a defendant charged with participating in the bombing of two U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998 that killed 224 people. The decision by Judge Leonard B. Sand in U.S.

October 19, 1986 | Don G. Campbell, Campbell is an author and Times staff writer

Of course. Having barely made his deadline, shaved hurriedly in the newspaper's restroom, and shown up 40 minutes late for his own wedding in blue jeans--what else would a devil-may-care, madcap reporter do for an encore? Well, if his name is Irwin Maurice Fletcher, what else would he do but scrap his Colorado honeymoon plans right after the marriage ceremony and whisk his new, Job-patient bride off to tropical Nairobi replete in thermal clothing and with well-waxed skis trailing behind?

LONDON -- In a highly unusual decision, the International Criminal Court allowed Kenya's deputy president, who is accused of crimes against humanity, to leave his trial at The Hague on Monday to go home and help deal with the terror attack at a Nairobi shopping mall. William Ruto was excused for a week by the ICC after his attorneys filed an urgent motion asking for proceedings against him to be adjourned so that he could return to Kenya to help the government respond to “an ongoing and extremely serious matter of national security.” Presiding Judge Chile Eboe-Osuji granted the request, an apparently unprecedented decision in what is already an unprecedented trial, the first by the court of a sitting government leader.

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa -- Kenya and the African Union failed on Friday to persuade the U.N. Security Council to delay the trials in the Hague of Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta and his deputy, William Ruto. The U.N. draft resolution seeking the delay was sponsored by Togo, Morocco and Rwanda, a strong opponent of the International Criminal Court, where the two leaders are facing trials over ethnic violence in their country during 2007 elections. The resolution argued that the Kenyan leaders need time to consolidate security in their country after the recent terrorist attack on a Nairobi shopping mall.

The African field hockey championships will finally take place in Kenya next month, which might not seem like a big deal until you know the backstory. The 2013 Africa Cup for Nations is proof that sports and politics can never be completely separate. The men's and women's tournament was originally scheduled to take place in Egypt but had to be moved because of political unrest in that country. Officials set a new date for early this month in Kenya. Then terrorists attacked Nairobi's Westgate shopping mall in a siege that claimed the lives of at least 67 people and injured many more.

NAIROBI, Kenya -- Kenyan officials said early Tuesday that the violent standoff at an upscale shopping mall was drawing to a close and that all hostages were believed to have been freed. "Our forces are combing the mall floor by floor looking for anyone left behind," the Interior Ministry said in a tweet about 1 a.m. "We believe all hostages have been released. " No other details were given. Gunfire and explosions were heard on and off throughout the day Monday, after security forces launched a dawn assault to flush out the militants who stormed the Westgate mall Saturday.

With a thriving economy and two free, fair elections under its belt, Kenya was supposed to be a model for Africa. But much of its progress appears to have unraveled in two weeks of postelection violence in which 500 people have been killed and 250,000 driven from their homes. An economy that grew 6% last year has screeched to a halt, tribal clashes are threatening to boil over, and Kenya's reputation as a democratic stalwart is in tatters.

Today's hijacking to Geneva of a Rome-bound Ethiopian Airlines jetliner brought back memories for us--not of hijackings of the past, but of this exceptional airline, which we flew all over Africa, often in in rather singular conditions, during the 1980s and early 1990s. To get the most urgent news out of the way first, today's incident was resolved without injuries to any of the 202 passengers and crew about the Boeing 767. Reports are that ...

Kofi Awoonor, poet and diplomat from Ghana, was slain during the Kenya mall attack. The seige of the Nairobi mall by an Al Qaeda-linked Somalia militia began on Sept. 20 and is currently ongoing. A total of 62 people have been killed, including three assailants. Awoonor was in Kenya for the 2013 Storymoja Hay Festival, a four-day long celebration the art of storytelling that was suspended after the mall shootings. He had been asked to participate in the festival by Ghanaian-born Jamaican poet Kwame Dawes, who remembered him in the Wall Street Journal.